With MPs’ expenses dominating the news this week, there was less room than usual for NHS manager bashing, miracle cures or the rest of the usual health-related fare.
Notable exceptions include a story headlined: “How you can add years to your life” in The Daily Express, presumably written by a do-gooding journalist inspired by Mark Britnell’s much loved catchphrase, who wants to save PCTs a bit of cash and one half of the hassle of world class commissioning by getting the public to do the job for them. The “secret of living longer”, as it turns out, is “a regular dose of sunshine” - free for all at the point of use, no less.
We look forward to the The Daily Express’s recommendations in future editions on how to add life to years, a feat it has already performed for the late Princess Diana.
Meanwhile, The Daily Mirror appears to have been waiting for an opportunity to use the headline “Should not have gone to Specsavers” - and could wait no longer. It described how after the opticians put the lenses in her glasses the wrong way round, two-year-old Rubie “got home and kept bumping into things”. It was all the opticians’ fault, as the story makes clear. Fortunately, “after a month stumbling around, mum Krystal stopped her wearing them”.
Returning to the big issue of the fortnight, and depending on which paper you read, health secretary Alan Johnson is either Labour’s “last chance” (former staunch Brownite Polly Toynbee in The Guardian), or “would not provide Labour with a short cut to a happy ending - or even to a mitigation of record low popularity” (The Independent on Sunday). You decide.
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